Rami Malek is always learning, and that continued on the set of The Amateur. The Academy Award-winner stars opposite Laurence Fishburne in 20th Century Studios’ adaptation of Robert Littell’s 1981 novel of the same name. The story sees Charlie Heller (Malek), a CIA cryptographer, go on a rogue mission to track down the terrorists that killed his wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan).

The entire weight of The Amateur‘s story falls on the shoulders of the strength of Charlie and Sarah’s relationship, which largely exists off-screen. Given the fact that Sarah’s death comes early in the first act, it’s up to Malek to sell the strength of their dynamic on his own, through visual representations of grief.

ScreenRant spoke with Malek and Fishburne to discuss how Malek approached bringing those grieving nuances to his performance as Charlie, where Fishburne finds the line between himself and his characters, and what both actors do to fill their silences.

Rami Malek Makes Improv Choices To Sell Charlie’s Grief

“I found myself just wanting to hold onto that person…”

Shortly after Sarah’s death in The Amateur, Charlie is given her belongings in a suitcase. After opening the luggage, Charlie throws his face into the stack of clothes, his tears streaming into the garments of his late wife.

“I found myself just wanting to hold onto that person through the tactile nature of their belongings, and that’s what I thought,” Rami Malek told ScreenRant when asked about his improv decisions in this film. “It separated this character from a lot of other action heroes.”

Finding the right place to improvise comes from watching his peers on past sets.

“I go back to learning from other actors,” Malek continued. “I remember being on Paul Thomas Anderson’s film The Master, and I would watch the great Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams do these things in the moment. I’d never seen kind of improv moments done so… well, not diverting too far from text or anything. These moments would just come out of just knowing that character and being in the element.”

Charlie’s grief is at its peak when he is confronted with solitude. As another character explains to him in the later stages of the film, the difficulty with grief is “filling the silence” that comes with it.

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“It’s all about being still and allowing yourself to be in the silence,” Laurence Fishburne said when asked about how he confronts his own silence. “Silence is really the space where you can come in contact with wisdom, and in silence, that is where you can gather wisdom.”

“No, seriously,” Malek responded. “There’s nothing to follow. That’s beautiful.”

Laurence Fishburne Reveals “The Trick” With How He Approaches His Characters

“Many people like to think the exact opposite…”

“Being in the element” of characters can be easier when actors are able to find pieces of themselves in their roles. For Fishburne, he approaches his characters from the other direction.

“I’d like to think that most of the characters that I play are nothing like me. Many people like to think the exact opposite, so that’s the trick,” Fishburne said. “Most people like to think, ‘Oh, how much of you is in this?’ And for me, yeah, I’m using what I have. It’s my body, it’s my voice, but it’s really the imagination, the actor’s imagination combined with the text and everything else, all the other support that you get with wardrobe and production and direction and cinematography that helps you arrive at the character.”

Source: ScreenRant Plus